Lee Todd: Kentucky can compete in high tech by keeping our home-grown talent home

During my tenure as President, I have been blessed to spend time working and interacting with students at our institution and across Kentucky. Over the years, I’ve picked up and shared personal stories about moments that shaped my life. It has always been my hope that these stories may help a student with a challenge he or she faces. I thought it might be helpful to share those stories with a broader audience. The following is the last of six entries. I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I enjoyed living them.

Kentucky Can Compete

I spend quite a bit of time talking about the fact that Kentucky should consider technology as a potential solution to the problems we face in our economy. Too many people feel we cannot compete with other states throughout the country and other countries around the world. Don’t believe it! I’m here to tell you that KENTUCKY CAN COMPETE!

Of the 80 employees at the companies my ideas created – Projectron and DataBeam – 70 are native Kentuckians. I will gladly have those employees compete against anyone that the country or world wants to throw at us. Many of our faculty have said the same thing to me — that they would gladly put our best and brightest UK students up against any in the country.

I take great pride in the fact that our products were conceived in Kentucky, designed and developed in Kentucky, and are now manufactured in Kentucky! Once a year, at DataBeam we put on our shoes and go to Silicon Valley and announce new products. Three out of the last five years that I was with DataBeam, we won first place in the International Teleconferencing Trade Show; and Projectron’s unique projection picture tube is used in 90% of projection simulators worldwide.

DataBeam and Projectron’s people are exceptional. The beauty is that our colleges and universities are creating many like them and like yourselves. The tragedy is that we are giving them away to other states because we aren’t providing the right types of jobs for them.

The last year I taught at UK, 80% of the electrical engineering graduates left Kentucky to find jobs. Ninety percent of them were native Kentuckians! They went to AT&T, Hewlett Packard, Texas Instruments, IBM – good places! So Kentucky-educated people can compete! The issue remains that many are not competing here in our Commonwealth.

We need to create the kinds of jobs that can keep you all here. Because when we lose you, we lose your children and your children’s children. If any state can ill afford to lose people like yourself, it is Kentucky. So, Kentuckians can compete but we need more of you to compete on our soil.

This column is the last of six stories Lee Todd shared with the UK community before he left office on June 30.